1. Introduction

Over the years of developing Xu-Fu's Pet Guide, many ideas and suggestions accumulated. I have tried a few different tools like Trello or even Confluence to keep track of them together with my development notes, but these tools are way too clunky for this small project. And they all lack transparency.
This section aims to solve both problems: all my notes in one place, and making them visible to you, the hopefully curious reader!

2. Smaller tasks / bugs:

- ONGOING - TASK PRIO 1 CRITICAL: Move pet collections to files
=> rewrite function to create files and save them => rewrite anonymous user collection to not save them anymore but only import via API=> Rewrite index to grab latest collection from latest file and use that instead of DB as global=> Rewrite all functions that use collection info to use global one instead of DB

=> script to move all collections to files=> Maintenance mode, go through all COLL2 and adjust. Download files, then check for UserCollection usage and test collection features
=> remove Collections from DB

- SPIKE: review alternatives sorting, Tags are higher rated than Ratings - swap it around?
- SPIKE: message when comment reaches gold status working or not?
- SPIKE: collection viewer - Zoom makes problem, see message from sistercoyote - sometimes wrong level?
- SPIKE: When a strategy is unpublished, will the favourites be cleared? What happens to the favs in that case or when users open up the page?

- BUG PRIO 3: The (OP) colour and tag is not applied when comments are pulled through AJAX (load more)
- BUG PRIO 3: gold comment trigger will trigger email in the language of that person who made the deciding upvote. Not the person who made the comment. com_vote in ajax
- BUG PRIO 3: in profiles, btag and discord can be way too long. needs a way to display it properly
- BUG PRIO 3: article editor: when editing an article that is restricted to only ENglish and your own language is not english, it saves info into the localized part nevertheless and does not default to the EN version
- BUG PRIO 3: oh ominitron has the wrong NPC pets
- BUG PRIO 3: Calculation of average rating differs between mouseover in alternatives view and full view
- BUG PRIO 3: Reported by Jaguar: Alternatives tooltip sometimes shows a foreach error - for example on yula strategy
- BUG PRIO 3: Reported by Stan: Family Battler tooltips of family icons show sometimes the wrong achievement name
- BUG PRIO 3: Reported by Remte: Lil Ragnaros is not triggering the Shop tag https://wow-petguide.com/index.php?Strategy=3899#

- FIXED - BUG PRIO 1: Collection updater - the automatic collection updater enters empty collections when timing out. That breaks the collection viewer and it throws errors. Fix: put a limit to how many collections should be updated per cronjob run and have it run more often. Also: Change it so it always updates and will not create a history of collections. OR - shard it into multiple databases. This should be fixed once the collections are stored in files.
- FIXED - BUG PRIO 2: Reported by Thordros: weird bug with the strategy creator. It seems to think that some elemental dog pets can be substitutes for Alementals with Barrel Toss.
https://www.wow-petguide.com/index.php?Strategy=3074&Substitutes=1:84915- CANNOT REPRODUCE - BUG PRIO 2: Reported by Jaguar: The messages sent list seems to drag a variable along and always shows the same # of messages sent and the same date.

3. Suggestions

By Irayna: Add XP Values to link list on left (like EU/US appearances of Menagerie). To see which fights give more XP than usual (espcially for legion world quests)
By Flatluigi: 21.03.2018: minor sort of request: for the pets that don't have a level/can't battle, take them out of the calculations for number of pets at max level/at rare quality
By Remte: I'd like to have fresh comment responses notifications cleared out when I visit them independently.
By Panseit: message system, put an icon next to the user profile icon when new messages are there.
By Irayna: When viewing other peoples collection, add a column for your own pets to compare the collections.
By Remte: A notice on the landing page when Squirt day is up on EU or US with a quick link
By Prudentius: Setting for each user to have child comments sort ASC or DESC (depending on preference)
By Remte: When substitute finder is used, the description of the fight changes pets aswell.
By Remte: Allowing non-family substitutes in non-specific fights
By Darkgroob: Longest day achievement in an article with links to the individual fights
By Unknown: tool suggestion - compare pets of users and see what duplicates could be traded between them to optimize both collections
By Grainne: A tool similar to Rufa's tables http://web.archive.org/web/20150405233814/http://signature.neflin.net/wowpets/pets.php

4. Upcoming Project: New Ready-Check Tool (0%)

The Legion Ready Checker was one of the most popular tools on Xu-Fu. The addition of user strategies and breeds made this tool non-functional. To bring this back, a new tool showing the list of ALL pets could be created, showing how often the pet appears in each fight, broken down by breed. This could automatically cross-check with the saved collection. In a second step, a selector or sliders could be used to apply the table only on specific battling sections.

5. Upcoming Project: New Pet Tables in Articles (0%)

Every category article (like "Legion world quests") has a table on it that shows the required pets. This table is not using the new alternatives system and is therefore outdated.
This project is to create a new table that picks the best strategy for each fight in the category, based on the same criteria as the alternatives tooltip (favourite, ratings, tags..) and lists those pets. This should also include required or missing breeds. The table will most likely have a longer loading time and should therefore be hidden behind a "Load Pet Table" button that dynamically loads the table only on request.
Suggestion by Remte: tooltip showing which battles the pet appears in, make this interactable and the list of fights clickable to the respective strategy page

6. Upcoming Project: Rematch Mass Export (0%)

One of the most requested features is to mass export strategies to Rematch. Rematch can already import multiple strategies at once, but XuFu currently has no such export feature. That is mostly due to the existance of alternatives. Until user strategies and favourites, the page had no way of knowing which strategy is the best for you. This new tool will make use of those features and give you options from which section you cant to export strategies from, and if only your favourites or also the top pick for you should be exported.

7. Upcoming Project: New Dungeon Tool (0%)

Due to Teroclaw-Hatchling changes, the hardmode guides for Wailing Critters and Deadmines have been removed. Also, because of the addition of user strategies, the Celestial Tournament Planner is not working anymore. A new tool should be created that can be applied to any of the dungeons and to find the optimal strategies based on user collection for non-healing dungeons.

8. Upcoming Project: Pet Cards (0%)

Xu-Fu already has a database of all available pets with their skills, stats and additional info. This could be used to replace wowhead tooltips with built-in Xu-Fu pet tooltips that show more details about each pet, reduce loading times and give additional value to the tooltips.

9. Upcoming Project: Blog 2.0 (0%)

The blog should support different topics and different users posting updates. The blog should be sortable by topic / date. It should show a quick overview and should be searchable. There should be the option to go to a single blog post and view that in full screen.

11. Finished Projects

11.1 Project: Article Editor (finished April 16, 2018)

The page hosts many different articles and supports localization into 9 languages. This editor makes it easy for other users to add, edit or translate articles.
It is fully integrated into the user system, UAC, and allows on-page editing.

11.2 Project: Battletable 2.0 (finished June 02, 2018)

The battle tables were the first thing created on Xu-Fu. They are mostly static and not up to the standards of the current page.
This project was to fully re-create them, to integrate the user system, user collections and to add many more features such as breeds, coordinates, new Rematch formatting, an automated substitute finder and the option to record your attempts to make the strategy more accurate through crowd intelligence.

The substitute finder uses this logic:
no requirements => all substitutes are fine, based on skills and family
only a breed => creator pet, only show the selected breed(s). For substitutes, ignore breeds
only a stat => use the stat to determine which creator pet breed is OK. and use the stat for substitutes and their breeds
breed and stats => for the creators pet, only show the breed he activated. for substitutes, use the stat to show them or not.

11.3 Project: Dynamic Alternatives (finished July 01, 2018)

There should not be a limit to the amount of alternatives saved for any given fight. They should not have a fixed order either. The order should be dynamic and follow a logic that could include user settings, if the pets are in your collection, strategy upvotes, favourites, amount of pageviews, records of successful attempts or other factors.
The interface should use AJAX to reduce loading times and give a clear preview of the pets used.

The order in which strategies are shown is determined by 4 factors. Each factor supercedes the next. From top to bottom:

1. Favourited by userIf you set a strategy as favourite, it will be shown on top always

2. Pets missing from collectionThe sorting will prioritize based on how many pets from the strategy you do not have in your saved collection:
No pets missing > one pet missing > two pets missing > three pets missing

3. Tags - optionalIn the user settings, you can set the order of importance for all tags. Preferred tags move the strategy up, unfavored tags move it down in priority.

4. Rating and FavouritesRatings and Favourites are calculated together into one single score. The calculation is:
- One favourite counts exactly the same as one 5* rating
- The stars are transformed into the numerical sequence -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
- The average is calculated and multiplied by a factor that is determined on the amount of votes+ratings:
1-10 ratings: Factor = 0.5
11-20 ratings: Factor = 0.8
20+ ratings: Factor = 1
This calculation makes sure that a single 5* vote on a strategy is not counted more important than an average of 4.8* from a large amount of voters, for example.
Likewise, a strategy that received many below average votes will be considered worse than one that received only a single 1* rating.

The first three factors only apply to registered users. If you are visiting without a user account, only factor 4 decides the sorting.

11.4 Project: User Strategies (finished August 01, 2018)

Users should be able to add and edit their own strategies. The editing options should be integrated into the Battletables without adding more pages. Most if not all options should be dynamic using AJAX to minimize page reloading.

I’d like to report a bug, hope this is the right place. A linked group of similar crabs, starting with Kelp Scuttler, does not have their abilities aligned. For example, if the Kelp Scuttler is listed with the skills 1 1 2, when you scroll through the rest of the group, they are all listed as skills 2 2 2, while they should be the same as the first one. You can see it in this strategy:

Wondering - now that they changed the way pet battles work, would it be doable to add the pet trainer names in brackets beside the quest name? Not everyone knows the WQ name if it isnt up, but the trainer name is easy to reference.

Not too soon: To avoid duplicates, any achievement-specific (Plushie, Family and as it was suggested The Longest Day) strategy could be automatically linked in the "global" encounter list (still redirecting to family section after clicking). To prevent clutter, they could be displayed only via user input to show more. If this is not worth it, just expand the duplicate warning to all sections of the page… though it could be problem when someone decides to apply a strat the other way i.e. from globals to specific ones :P

Implementing a mention feature like I've seen you talk about sounds fantastic.
Another thing I've thought would be great would be adding a "date posted" and/or "date updated" to strategy pages. That way if/when Blizzard nerfs and makes changes to battle pets again, we'll be able to see when the strategy was posted, and whether or not it's been updated since the changes Blizzard made, so we know to alert others in the comments about it or to just look into finding a more recent strategy.

Just found this page of upcoming projects. A lot of great stuff there. Just a couple requests.Under #10, you asked "Add a friend (what effects)" I would love to be able to add a friend and compare our pets, to see which ones they have that I still need. Also I would love a category on the pet lists that tells me how rare my pets are compared to the rest of the wow population, something like "Pet name = Ikky: Owned by 25% of other players"

Hey! Long time user here, love love love your work :)
Have seen few suggestions similar to mine, relating high XP battles leveling pet fights.
I was thinking of a list of fights for Pet battle week (bonus event) when you get that lovely +200% XP, focusing to those battles that give high XP.
So my idea was to have a list categorized by areas, where you can find those battles that give high XP, so most beneficial to do on the bonus week. It could be a pet leveling strat at the same time even on the weeks where the bonus XP isn't on.

I love the site and have used it religiously for several years, thanks for all your hard work.

If I could give one little bit of feedback. I copy the turn instructions and paste them into the Rematch notes for each saved team. Previously the copied notes would paste with each turn on one line (with the turn number and description separated by whitespace). However, sometime between mid-Legion and today the page structure has changed so that copy and paste now loses the formatting and each cell is on its own line (so the turn number is on its own line then the description on the next line and so on).

I'd love to see the old table structure return (maybe just for the popout?) although tbh its not a major problem to manually fix the notes after pasting.

Hey Pike! I'm aware of this and one of the next things I'll work on is to include the strategy steps into rematch notes directly, so you won't have to do 2 copy pastes anymore, and this formatting issue will be gone at the same time :-)

Allow users to link pets when typing comments so you could use your links you want for wowhead on your own site as well. Also the links would allow you to say prevent people from link beast pets on the Aquatic Assault page etc. Additionally, it could eventually even help you import strategies from comments.

Hey :) Thanks a lot for the suggestion. That is planned as part of the "Pet Cards" project. At the same time I will most likely add a "mention" feature, like on many other platforms, where you put an @ and start typing a username and can then select a name to be mentioned and they get a ping about it.

Just wondering how Battletable 2.0 is coming along. Looking forward to the new features and hadn't seen any noticeable updates on this Development Notes page lately. Thanks for all the team's great work on the site. I love it.

Hey :)
There are smaller changes here and there. I did put it to 70% completed recently because the main parts are done, and I think that's a fair estimate :D There's only some minor additions missing like a system for tags, or the coordinates of tamers. I'm getting there! Outside of weekends I barely find the time to work on it nowadays, unfortunately. But I think at least this part will be ready well before BfA comes out.